Unsung Broncos making impact

'Non-starters' helping Denver succeed on field

ENGLEWOOD -- When the frame is constructed around the Broncos' season, the picture many will focus on will be a posed shot from a March afternoon.

The one with Peyton Manning holding a Broncos jersey standing next to a smiling John Elway -- one man in the Hall of Fame, the other likely going in five years after he throws his last NFL pass. It is an unprecedented tale, one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history, in his second football life as a team executive, signs one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history to re-construct glory.

But tucked behind that picture, there is more to see. The one Elway refers to when discussing impact beyond the draft and free agency.

"Impact doesn't necessarily always mean a starter," Elway said. "It's finding the right people and putting them in the right situations. You always want impact, talent, youth, athleticism, but your team has to have the right guys with all of that. They don't have to be great for everybody, they just have to be great for the Denver Broncos, and it's up to us to make good football players and put them in the right positions to give us impact."

Any team, anywhere, could have had all five of those players at some point, and had them for a phone call. Not for a draft pick, not for a signing bonus hammered out over drawn-out negotiations.

A phone call. Like the kind they got from the Broncos.

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"It's opportunity," Carter said. "The Broncos gave me the opportunity. I feel like I've worked for this and just needed somebody to see."

In Elway's tenure as the Broncos' top football executive, the selection of Von Miller with the second pick of the 2011 draft and Manning's signing are foundation moments. But how the Broncos do with the rest of it, how they handle their salary cap, maintain their depth and youth, how they make decisions down the roster, will determine the success over the long haul.

There are this year's late arrivals, such as Leonhard, Brooking and Koppen. There is an overnight sensation four years in the making in Carter. There is Harris, who has gone from undrafted rookie to a starter. All have helped to power the Broncos to a 9-3 mark.

"All those guys have done fantastic things for this team," safety Rahim Moore said. "It's like adding some of the important pieces of the puzzle after you already started putting it together."

Carter has been cut twice by the Broncos, once by the Patriots and once by the Vikings. Elway and the Broncos saw enough tenacity in his play in training camp, however, to keep him instead of one of their high-profile offseason free-agent signees, Drayton Florence.

Harris made the team as an undrafted rookie last season and started four games in 2011. He earned the starting job as the cornerback opposite Champ Bailey this season when Tracy Porter missed time recovering from a seizure. Harris has kept the job since.

Leonhard, Koppen and Brooking were veteran free agents mulling their futures, weighing their options, when the Broncos called either after training camps or the regular season had begun.

Koppen and Brooking are now starters at center and middle linebacker respectively with Leonhard a key situational player on defense.

Even a player such as Mitch Unrein, who was released by the Texans as a rookie in 2010 and was signed to the Broncos practice squad by the team's former personnel regime, now finds himself in the rotation at defensive tackle.

"One thing I know, is you can have all the individual awards or whatever, but to win it all, it takes everybody," Broncos cornerback Champ Bailey said. "I've been in this league a long time, and I just want to play for a championship, but the teams you see win it have everybody pointing that way, doing what it takes.

"And the teams that win more than one, that's what makes them so special because they keep pointing that way even after they did it. But it takes everybody, no matter how they got here or how long they've been here, to do it."

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